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THE CLAIMS OF HARVARD COLLEGE UPON ITS SONS. 



SERMON 



PREACHED IN 



THE CHAPEL OF THAT INSTITUTION, 



ON 



LORD'S DAY AFTERNOON 



JULY 13, 1834. 



■ST 

By JOHN G" PALFREY, A. M. 3 

PROFESSOR OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE 



CAMBRIDGE: 
JAMES MUNROE AND CO 
1834. 



»v 



6r?7f 



CAMBRIDGE PRESS: 
METCALF, TORRY, AND BALLOU, 



In' 

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* 



SERMON. 



2 KINGS, IV. 13. 

SAY NOW UNTO HER; BEHOLD, THOU HAST BEEN CAREFUL FOR US 
WITH ALL THIS CARE ; WHAT IS TO BE DONE FOR THEE ? 

Your thoughts, my friends, anticipate me, in 
the use which I am about to make of this text. 
The question proposed, in the application I have 
in view, while it may be supposed to address 
itself, at this moment, with a special interest to 
the minds of those, who are taking part for the 
last time in our Sabbath solemnities, yet demands, 
on essentially the same grounds of obligation, to 
be as seriously weighed by others of my hearers 
as by them. To some of us, in other times, has 
been already extended by this college that care, 
which more recently these, our young friends, 
have been experiencing ; and some, in one or 
another stage of the course now completing by 
their associates, are accumulating the debt to 
which our present inquiry relates. This college 
has been careful with great care for many more, 
now scattered to all the borders of the country, 
and to all the quarters of the world. What is to 
be done by all and by each of us, in requital of 
the benefit so conferred ? 



Am I met, however, on the threshold of the 
inquiry, by the remark, that, when I speak of a 
college, I am speaking only of an abstraction, 
am only using a name ; that a college is a 
thing incapable of an intelligent purpose to do 
a service, and incapable of being the object of 
gratitude for a service done ? If it be necessary 
to advert to such a thought, it cannot be neces- 
sary to do more than say, that to speak of an 
institution of this nature as conferring benefits and 
entitled to gratitude, is to employ, if a not en- 
tirely accurate, a brief and convenient way of 
expressing a very substantial and unquestionable 
fact. That a good has been done, when the minds 
of many, or of few, under suitable discipline, have 
been endowed with great resources and satisfac- 
tions within themselves, and with a great power 
to serve others, is an argument which I suppose 
needs not to be labored here. If the good has 
been done, by what means has it been done ? Of 
course, by means of the apparatus here provided 
and maintained ; by the communications of the 
living teacher, by access to books, and to other 
like instruments for the acquisition of knowledge, 
and by the mutually quickening influence of associ- 
ation among those, whom the existence of such ad- 
vantages here has brought together to enjoy them. 
How then came these advantages here, for they 
are not the spontaneous products of the soil ? 
They have been collected by successive endow- 
ments of public and private bounty. The Com- 
monwealth, with a signal munificence, has done 



her part, through all the period of her history, 
giving from a treasury furnished by contributions 
of all her citizens, the rich and the poor. Pri- 
vate benefactors have with a generous public 
spirit done theirs, bringing hither, from generation 
to generation, the tribute of their hard earnings, 
and the tokens of their liberal and enlightened 
views ; the opulent giving in the measure of their 
abundance, and they who were rich only in the 
wealth of a noble spirit, bestowing in the largest 
proportion of their narrower ability. They make 
all of us, who have studied here, the objects of 
their gratuitous bounty, the recipients of their in- 
telligent charity. They suffer no one to defray the 
charge of the education which he receives within 
their walls. However affluent, my friends, any of 
us or of our parents may be, we have none of us 
been living here at our own or our parents' cost. 
For a great part of the means of improvement, 
which here we have been enjoying, we are suf- 
fered to render no pecuniary equivalent. What 
view had they who have so served us, in putting 
themselves to such an expense ? Certainly not a 
view to the indulgence of any whim or convenience 
of their own, or of ours ; but a view to the pro- 
motion of certain great objects, which when we 
have considered, we shall be guided to repay the 
debt of gratitude we owe to them, or, in other 
words, as I first stated it, to the college through 
which we have received their benefactions. The 
debt of gratitude, I say ; for never was a more 
incontestable claim of justice. Their college has 



6 



found no very apt pupil, as far as logic is con- 
cerned, in him who can entertain the idea, that 
he may honorably go from beneath their roof, to 
pursue merely his own selfish ends with the help 
of the learning which they gave him, regardless 
henceforward of them, and of the purposes for 
which they bestowed it. 

But, if we owe the patrons of our college such 
a debt, to whom shall we repay it ? since from 
its nature and the circumstances of the case, it is 
incapable of being discharged directly to them- 
selves, nor was such their own intention. 

I. We should testify our gratitude, in the first 
place, by causing their good offices to be effectual 
for that elevation of our own characters, which 
was one of the objects in their contemplation. 

Doubtless it was part of their design, to be bene- 
factors, on a large scale, by promoting the individual 
good of all, who, from age to age, should pre- 
sent themselves to share in the advantages they 
offered ; and, accordingly, by using those advan- 
tages to that end, it belongs to us to accomplish 
their wishes, and render our acknowledgments. 
They intended to give to every object of their 
liberality the power of earning, by the honest labor 
of his mind, a decent maintenance, without being 
further burdensome to others ; and so far they 
would have a right to complain of whoever should 
go from beneath their care to live an idle life, even 
if he should think to dignify his pusillanimous un- 
profitableness, by calling it by some such name 
as the enjoyment of learned leisure. They de- 



signed to give to their pensioners opportunity to 
realize the satisfactions, appropriate to the holding 
of those places in society, which are attended with 
influence, and regarded with respect ; and it con- 
cerns our duty to them, that no negligence of ours 
should frustrate this their purpose. But they in- 
tended, my hearers, to put us in possession of 
enjoyments, far beyond what any array of pros- 
perous external circumstances is able to afford. 
The world of intellect and feeling within us, is 
that where our happiness is most truly held to 
reside ; and that world it was their purpose to 
set in order and enrich. The high and unalloyed 
satisfactions, which God has made to be found in 
the pursuit and contemplation of the truth ; the 
pleasures inseparable from the mind's action in a 
sphere, where there is every thing to excite, and 
nothing to irritate ; the delights belonging to the 
developement and harmony of those capacities, 
which ally the human with superior natures ; the 
joys that inhabit the empyrean region of sober 
thought ; to these, and to a strong and permanent 
relish for these, it was their will to introduce us, • 
and if we do not greatly prize and earnestly seek 
the boon, we shall have done them, as truly as our- 
selves, much less than justice. They did not desire 
to give a knowledge, which should serve the bad 
purposes of an unholy mind. They did not aim 
to furnish, in any man's cultivated understanding, 
an armoury of treason against his higher nature. 
It was the mandate of a christian charity, which 
bade these walls arise ; of a charity, which con- 



8 

templated the advancement of the interests of the 
accountable and never-dying soul. Upon their 
humble front, when first it lifted itself, making 
the desert rejoice, it wrote their consecration ' to 
Christ and to the Church.' It did not mean 
thus to announce alone, that it proposed to 
rear within them a ministry for Christ's and the 
Church's service ; though this of course was one 
prominent way towards the attainment of the more 
comprehensive object ; but, that it would build up, 
in every heart it might reach, an invisible temple 
of the christian faith, that it would send forth in 
every intellect it should nurture, an efficient friend 
and advocate of the Redeemer's cause. It meant 
to make the intellectual element in man capable 
of ministering effectually to the higher element of 
goodness ; of doing its bidding, and quickening 
its growth, and signalizing its dignity. Few, if 
any, my friends, let us trust, will ever be found 
those recreant brethren of ours, who will be so 
lost to reason and to duty alike, as to use the 
weapons, with which they have furnished them- 
selves from this mental arsenal, in a warfare 
against all that is most excellent within them. 
Such ' a foolish son ' might well be called c the 
heaviness of his mother,' and 'his mother,' as the 
prophet says, be c sore confounded by him.' Be 
it ours, at all events, to render so far the most 
acceptable honor to the benefactors of our minds, 
by dedicating all conquests, we may have won in 
the wide field of intellect, for so many sanctified 
offerings to the supreme source of all intelligence ; 



9 

by making all knowledge and accomplishments, 
we have been assisted to acquire, lend their aid 
towards the culture of a manly, pervading, and 
vigorous piety. The intellectual light is but faint 
and clouded, unless the spiritual lend its rays, 
making it pierce and warm, while it shines ; nor 
alone can it quicken any growth of the soul, to 
repay much pains in the rearing. But let the 
acquisitions of the understanding bring the tribute 
of their energy and richness to the graces of the 
heart, and we witness a venerable specimen of 
that nature, which then without incredulity we 
hear described as ' a little lower than the an- 
gels.' 

II. But certainly it was not the ultimate object 
of those, whose wishes, having been benefited by 
their bounty, we are bound to consult, to convey 
even the highest good to such as should be the 
immediate objects of their care. They entertained 
the comprehensive wishes of patriots, of philan- 
thropists, of christians. At their own cost, but 
through our agency, they designed to benefit their 
race, in our country, in all countries, in all inter- 
ests, in all times. Intelligent and well-intended 
human action, they knew was the instrument for 
doing this ; and for such action they designed to 
give power and impulse, through their benefac- 
tions, to every mind which these should reach. 

Accordingly, my friends, I present it as a dis- 
tinct and unquestionable obligation resting on the 
sons of this college, to go thence to labor, after 
the largest measure of their powers, for the pro- 
2 



10 

motion of the common good. We withhold the 
payment of a debt contracted to those, who have 
here put us in possession of any capacities of 
effective action we may exert, if we limit our- 
selves, in the use of these capacities, to the attain- 
ment of any personal end. In whatever liberal 
pursuit we may choose, we cannot consent, until 
we have become deaf to the plainest dictates of 
justice, to do merely as much as will give us a 
living, or wealth, or office, or fame, and there 
cease our endeavours. Our public spirit, our spirit 
of christian benevolence, is to be partly mani- 
fested in one or another form, according to the 
peculiar facilities and occasions of that sphere of 
service to God and our generation, which we may 
have adopted for our own ; but in no sphere of 
action can it honorably fail of being manifested. 
The lawyer is not to argue his causes, and satisfy 
his clients, and receive his gains, and then sup- 
pose that he is acquitted of his duty. No ; he 
received part of his preparation to do this at the 
charge of those, who demand from him, in return, 
that he should make some contribution to those 
great doctrines of social justice, on which, as on 
a broad and firm foundation, the fabric of social 
happiness stands ; or, at least, that, pervaded by 
the spirit of the noble science he professes, he 
should always be found standing in his lot, the 
inflexible friend of public liberty and order, and 
of private right. The physician has not discharged 
the obligations, which here in the early stage of 
his career were laid upon him, when he has pur- 



11 

sued his curious researches into all the realms 
of nature, and into the mysterious dependencies 
of the fearfully and wonderfully fashioned human 
frame, nor when he has spread his renown, nor 
when he has made his fortune. No ; he owes 
such contributions as he may make to the re- 
sources of the excellent art he practices ; and he 
has an office of benevolence to fulfil, wherever 
he may bring relief to the infirmities of man's 
exposed and suffering mortal nature. The states- 
man, educated here, leaves a large and righteous 
claim unsatisfied, if he allows himself, I will not 
say, to consult only his own aggrandisement, but 
to limit his action to any narrow aims ; and the 
man of fortune, if he devotes himself to the in- 
dulgence of his ease or his tastes. Such service 
as either has acquired here capacity to render to 
the general welfare, and to that truth which in all 
departments is the great element of the general 
welfare, such service each has come here under 
an inevitable obligation to present. The teacher, 
who has been here instructed, is not to teach, the 
merchant is not to traffic, without higher views 
than views of private interest mingling among 
their motives. They stand indebted to those who 
meant, that whoever should be indebted to them 
should in his turn bring others under obligation for 
wise and generous kindnesses. Each is thus held 
to do the work, by which he supports or advances 
himself, in a liberal spirit, using under the im- 
pulse of a high sense of duty the opportunities, 
which his peculiar pursuits afford, for communi- 



12 

eating knowledge, and diffusing happiness, and 
recommending good habits and good principles to 
all with whom those pursuits connect him. And 
the minister of religion, solemn and clear and 
conclusive as his other obligations are, is to recog- 
nise yet an added motive to abound for others in 
every good word and work, in the implied con- 
dition, under which he received so much of what- 
ever power he has of addressing others' reason 
and feelings. But very far are the forms of effort, 
in which the good and wise are to fulfil their 
appointed office, from being circumscribed within 
the limits of any professional action. The lawyer, 
or physician, or teacher, does not sustain that one 
character alone. He is much more, than what the 
name of his occupation indicates. He is a man ; 
having all the sympathies and relations of a man ; 
having endless ways, in his extra-professional 
walk, of access to human understandings, and 
control over human character and welfare. All 
methods of influence, thus opened to minds, which 
possess any added power of influence by means 
of their acquisitions here, are to be sacredly em- 
ployed for others' highest benefit. We are to be 
true to our vocation in taking care, that whoever 
is at the trouble to observe any one of us, shall 
observe the course of a friend to good order ; a 
patron, according to his means, of good objects ; 
an associate and fellow-laborer, a counsellor or 
disciple of good men ; an inquisitive and honest 
seeker, a firm and fearless champion, of the truth. 
If God has given us ability to do any thing to 



13 

extend the triumphs of truth, we shall regard this 
as a privilege deserving all gratitude, and a work 
demanding all devoted endeavour. And, with 
humility, no doubt, but still with meek confidence 
in him, who suffers no well-intended service to 
remain wholly and for ever unavailing, we shall 
indulge the hope, that something we may have 
worthily done, in act or thought, may be benefi- 
cially felt, though the doer should be all unknown, 
even by distant men and by other times. 

III. Once more ; if we acknowledge obligations 
to the worthies on the honored roll of the patrons 
of this college, the institution through which their 
bounty has been conveyed to us, the institution 
which was such a cherished object of their affection 
and care, should be always an object of affection 
and care to us. 

I am not asserting, my friends, that, should cir- 
cumstances make such a course possible, we are 
ever to show our gratitude to our college at the 
expense of our integrity. I know of no gratitude, 
which cancels that obligation ; and sure I am, 
that such a service our college will never ask at 
our hands, and will never receive from them, till 
we are most unworthy sons. I am not saying, 
that the measures of her administration are never 
to be canvassed by those, who have been objects 
of her bounty. It may well be more or less their 
right and duty, according to different relations 
which they sustain to her, and to different oppor- 
tunities possessed by them of information and 
influence, to have, and to urge an opinion, favor- 



14 

able or otherwise, upon such measures. But I am 
affirming, that they are to be canvassed, when 
they do come under our notice, I was about to 
say, in the spirit of an affectionate solicitude, that 
they may be found, on examination, to be worthy 
of approval ; but I will rather say, in the spirit 
of an earnest solicitude, that they may either 
prove to be of that character, or may eventually 
be made so. But, leaving this, with the repetition 
of the single remark, that I am speaking of no 
gratitude, if such there could be, which should 
involve any violation of integrity or justice, I urge 
that the sons of this college, wherever they go, 
and whatever they do, are not to suffer themselves 
to forget, that here dwells the nursing mother of 
their minds ; and it is 'a foolish son/ says the 
wise man, who ' despiseth his mother/ If she 
should ever seem to appeal to us, by a claim of 
filial duty, for any thing adverse to severer obli- 
gations, we may be sure that it is not then her 
voice that speaks, the blended voice of her wise 
and worthy through seven generations. But, on 
the other hand, in evil report and good report, 
our mother's honor is alike our care ; our mother's 
name is not to be lightly taken on injurious lips, 
while we stand by and hear. Till we are caitiff 
sons, we shall not imagine that there is no task 
for us, when justice, as we deem it, is not done 
her to the full. If we believe any charges which 
may have been made against her, on the score of 
religious partisanship, or the like, to be altogether 
unauthorized by the fact, we can have no dis- 



15 

pensation from saying so ; and that, very freely, 
unambiguously, and emphatically. If we believe, 
that an education nearly as good as is to be 
obtained any where else in this country, or quite 
as good, or a great deal better, is to be here 
obtained, in expressing our opinion to this effect, 
according as it may be, we shall but be acquitting 
ourselves of a manifest obligation of honorable 
men, sustaining the relation which we bear. But 
the credit of our college is not all, for which we 
are to feel concern, nor shall we have accom- 
plished what in this aspect appears to be its due 
from us, when we have vindicated its good name, 
and published and urged its merits. All its in- 
terests are to be substantially served by the labors 
of its friends, and among those friends we are to 
have our actions take care that our names be 
recorded. If God blesses us with wealth, I know 
not, among the public distributions which we may 
have grace to devise, what more grateful object 
we can propose to ourselves, than to turn back 
to pour a filial tribute into our mother's lap, to 
be dispensed to her younger hopes in ampler 
bounty, than she could command the means to 
afford to us. And here, I will even ask, in 
passing, since the subject leads to the inquiry, 
whether, while separately many of her children 
have ' done virtuously ' in this way, it is not time 
that some more extended and united action of 
them together should ' excel them all.' An emi- 
nent jurist * of the last century called his liberal 

* Chief Justice Dudley. 



16 

testamentary endowment, ' a poor thank-offering 
to God from his unworthy servant for his many 
and great mercies to him in his education at that 
college ;' and the words, ' once* a pupil, always 
a patron/ making part of the inscription, in which 
her gratitude recorded the merits of another dis- 
tinguished magistrate, on the edifice, by the gift 
of which he had expressed his filial regard, have 
a truth and an interest for the many bosoms, in 
which the same sentiment is doubtless devoutly 
cherished, f If we have no wealth to offer her, 
possibly there are those who have, who desire to 
have their liberal designs enlightened and guided 
by our, so far, better discretion, and to whom our 
upright and fitly spoken word may usefully com- 
mend her claims. We do something to possess 

* The inscription on the front of old Stoughton Hall was as follows-; 

Deo Opt. Max. Bonisq,. Literis S. 

Gtjlielmus Stoughton Armiger Provincije 

Massachuset. Nov-Anglorum Vice-Gubernator 

Collegii Harvardini Oeim Alumjus 

Semper Patrontjs Fecit 

Anno Domini 1699. 

Peirce's History, p. 71. 
t * The Court agreed to give 400 £ towards a schoale or Colledge, 
whearoff 200 £ to hee paid the next yeare, and 200 £ when the worke 
is finished, and the next Court to appoint wheare and wt building.' 

Such is part of the record of the General Court of Massachusetts Bay, 
convened Sept. 25th, (Oct. 6th, N. S.) 1636, and continued thence from 
day to day by adjournment. In little more than two years, then, the 
second century from the foundation of the College will be completed. 

Is it fit, or not, that her nineteen hundred living sons should be thinking 
of doing honor to that event by some joint expression of their gratitude ? 

Their aggregate means are ample. The wants of the college, in two 
respects, those of accommodation for its invaluable library, and provision 
for indigent students, are great. To keep the anniversary by a liberal 
united effort to advance the object, to which it owes its interest, would 
make a sensible and memorable novelty among forms of commemoration. 



17 

her patrons of the reward they coveted, when 
we increase the number of sharers in the good 
which they devised ; and, understanding their 
spirit to be that of the sage who said, that, when 
he did a kind action to one man, he always meant 
it should be paid to another, for he ' loved to have 
benefits go round,' we shall, as opportunity favors, 
enable young persons, who desire, and would do 
justice to, the advantages here, which we have 
enjoyed, to obtain them, by pecuniary assistance, 
if they need, and we can render it, or by infor- 
mation, counsel, facilities in their studies, or other 
requisite aid. It may be, that the interests of our 
college may require to be served in the public 
councils. If we have a place there, it is true that 
we shall be acting under obligations, higher than 
can be deduced from any relations our youth has 
borne, or favors it has experienced. But, in that 
sphere, we may well rejoice, that we can use the 
voice she formed to tell with freedom and affection 
all her desert, and to plead her cause, with a full 
heart and to good purpose, as often as we see 
that her interests and the public interests are the 
same. Like the Psalmist's wishes for the home of 
his kindred, our friendly wishes will $be breathed 
for her, in entreaties for a blessing to him who 
alone can bless. We shall pray for her peace ; 
that they may prosper that love her ; that peace 
may be within her walls, prosperity within her 
palaces. For our brethren and companions' sakes 
we shall ask, that peace may be within her. 
Happy they, once more, who, rendering her the 
3 



18 

best honor by signal services to the cause of 
truth, and righteousness, and God, and man, shall 
authorize her to say, with the proudest exulta- 
tion of the maternal heart, ' behold my jewels/ 
Yes, my brethren ; and happy every one of us, 
who, in an humbler sphere, by the consistent 
tenor of worthy lives, shall do credit to the rear- 
ing which she gave us. 

If there is any truth in what has been said, I 
would submit, in a word, that it is not applicable 
alone to such, as have obtained from this college 
that general education of the mind, which is to 
serve for a basis for the further studies of prepara- 
tion for professional pursuits ; but also to those, 
her children by later adoption, who having chosen 
their walks in life, have then sought her aid, while 
they advanced towards them.* They, too, have 
been domesticated in her family. They have been 
profited by, and become debtors to, her bounty. 
Her honor is their honor. Her prosperity must 
be their care ; nor of them is it any more to be 
supposed, that having received from her what she 
had to bestow, they should ever go from her door 
that welcomed them, on their sordid way, and not 
cast back, while they tread it, a glance of thank- 
fulness and good-will. 

For those who are not to meet us again in these 
Sabbath services, the feeling which arises in the 
mind cannot fail to be a feeling of affectionate in- 

* The number of professional students in the different faculties, in the 
academical year 1833-4, approached within one fifth to that of under- 
graduates. 



19 

terest. We hope that success and honors await 
them in the world ; and we hope that the world, 
into whose mass they are proceeding, is to find 
them ambitious of that truest honor and success, 
which are only to be found in usefulness. But we 
know that honor and success are not all which 
they are to look for. They are men ; and the 
common lot of men is to be theirs. We hope that 
when, hereafter, the bitter experiences of that 
changing lot shall come to any, they may find the 
christian spirit ' of power and of a sound mind/ 
6 of wisdom and of the fear of the Lord,' present 
to sustain them in their hour of trials and ' the 
peace of God, which passeth all understanding/ 
shining like warm sunlight on their hearts, when 
the cloud has passed away. May God Almighty, 
' the God before whom their fathers walked/ ' the 
God which hath fed them all their lives long unto 
this day/ go with them on their untried way, 
keep, and direct, and bless them, and redeem 
them from all the evil that is in the world. A 
guiding pillar of fire to them in the glooms of life, 
may he be too a shading pillar of a cloud to allay 
the consuming blaze of their untempered pros- 
perity. May he incline them to trace happiness 
to its untroubled fountain. May he teach them to 
sanctify and truly to enjoy his gifts, by devoting 
them to the one great aim of his glory and his 
children's good. May they prove signal blessings 
to the friends who have so longed, and perhaps 
so struggled, to see them coming forward to the 
honorable tasks of life. Young, may they pro- 



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foundly feel the high responsibilities of educated 
youth. Aged, may they reap the rich reward of 
well-spent years in the general esteem, and their 
own approving consciousness. May they be aided 
to contribute bright names to the catalogue of 
their country's worthies. May every name stand 
in golden characters on the Lamb's book of life. 
Long, and useful, and prosperous, if so it please 
God, be their earthly service ; honored, the place 
of their last rest ; that memory of the just which 
is blessed, the memory which they leave behind ; 
and the company of the just made perfect, the 
society where their ripe spirits shall find at last 
congenial and satisfying good. 



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